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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

So Instead of our planned trip to Canberra, we enjoyed a slower start to the day and a trip to Avalon. "The cook's larder" provided a gorgeous lunch and the remainder of the days daylight was spent in Mayagems, a fantastic beadshop run by wonderful people.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Firstly, a morning of work at MDAA. To catch the Blue mountains train I scurried out of there and made the train by seconds the same with my connection. All this rushing was in aid of meeting up with Aleks (on time) on one of his "I'm coming to Sydney.....tomorrow and only spending 3 days there" trips.

Dougie, Aleks and I had lunch in a popular noodle joint next to Kinokuniya at TGV.We filled each other I on our lives thus far. After a slight browse through the bookshop Aleks left to purchase some dancing shoes. Dougie and I continued our browsing and after a while caught the train home to find that a copy of "Waiting for Godot" was not amongst our book collection. Dougie would have to attend his literature class without one, a fact made more irritating by the fact we had been in a rather large book shop not a short time ago....alas.

Tomorrow we had planned to take a day trip to Canberra. Ostensibly to hand in my British passport renewal application. That done the rest of the day would be spent at the National Art Gallery and the Glassworks. I quickly reviewed my passport paperwork to find that I needed to reprint one page, so off to the British Embassy website....

Only to find out that practically days ago a new procedure had been put in place that allows applications to ONLY be processed through Australia Post outlets.... for a fee. The passport renewal fee has also been raised. All up it will cost $467.OUCH. If I didn't need a 100 points of ID so much...

Next Dougie finds out that the glassworks is closed Monday and Tuesday.It would have been a really annoying day had none of this information been revealed until tomorrow.

The glass department got a very thorough scrub this morning to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for next semester (and holiday classes). It's amazing where little bits of glass go.

For the second time in the space of three days we ended up at the red lion for a drink and lunch (fills a gap but nought else). It was a bigger group this time a mix of years with the addition of Andrew and Marcus.

This years Venice biennale, the 53rd of it's type is introducing a new event featuring 35 (according to urban glass quarterly) or 45 (according to Domus) contemporary artist's working in glass. The exhibition is "Glass stress". Searching the Biennale website for details of it however was not fruitfull.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

As I was searching for artists using myth, folk & fairy tales in their work I found a site called Taxidermy: Ravishing beasts which led me to a group of artists who call themselves the idiotswho use taxidermy and mixed media."Getting into science" & "Ophelia" are close favourites..Mickey was amusing also.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

After our assessments and time spent in the hot shop as the building was off limits unless you were being assessed.Some of us assisted Trish with some blowing she was doing...though really assisted sounds more than it was.

We packed up and piled into Debs car off to the Red Lion for a celebratory drink.

We all went our separate ways, though for myself it was back to uni to do some bottle crushing for Nola's mosaic project. Sabrina is going to fuse a lot of it next week.

The second years were all putting up their own pieces for assessment. Very exciting, though no small amount of stress flowed through the air.

Hopefully we'll all be as good next year. Good luck you lot!

Dougie picked me and all my glass up at 4.30, we got home and I fell asleep.

At this stage it doesn't look as though i'll get the eee pc (linux) set up for wireless in time to present it as my visual diary..which this blog also manages to be.

In the cold room I tried out the cork belt on the linisher. Not sure I like the result as it left streaky marks on the previously shiny (ceriumed) glass. I re ceriumed it and possibly achieved a better result. May be I had the order wrong.

The large bubble I blew a while back is looking better. I polished the sandblasted pattern and I quite like the look of it. For next time I would sandblast it deeper so there would be a higher relief. Letting the nail varnish I used for the mask would also work better if left to dry for longer.I only let it dry over night. 2 days and even the thick bits are hard.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Work at MDAA this morning..then to uni.After gritblasting my large bubble ( & removing the nail varnish mask) I made another attempt to get my eee pc wireless at Uni.Hours later still not hooked up but hopeful (thanks to Robert at IT support) I realised I had not done any cold working..so that's making tomorrow a bit tighter than expected but should get it all done.

There was a brief patch of sun delivered today between 8 and 9 am. The occasional shower occasioned every half hour.

A quiet day with Dougie caught in the headlights of utube whilst I struggled with setting up a wireless account on my laptop for uni which looks as though it won't be doable. Linux OS are off the radar at the moment..hmmm so what was plan B to show my online visual diary huh?

I planned out the next couple of days to fit my assessment tasks in plus work, polished and washed various bits of glass.

Dinner was eggplant curry, dahl & rice with chocolate mousse after a short story reading from Neil Gaiman's "fragile things".

Against my more sensible sensibilities I thought it would be a good idea to watch blade runner..which turned out to be highly frustrating as the copy we have started to stutter..and between it's inability to stop and Dougie's insistence it would get better (but never did) tonight is a little late.

Dougie picked me up at 4.30 upon whence I demanded coffee and cake..which we had at Sappho's second hand book shop in Glebe. We then carried on to see if Hoyts at Broadway had something not too Awful..which turned out to be a movie version of the scifi novel "The land of the lost".It was very veryvery silly.

Sashimi and plum wine after the film filled any gap there was after a half a small tub of popcorn.Seriously it WAS the smallest they offer.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

I still have a cold. This week was meant to be one of the weeks to get practical work done for our assessments however from experience I KNOW not to do practical work when I have a cold. Memories of cutting skirt lengths too short convinced i had the right measurement and ruining drawings convince me that I should just concentrate on my visual diary (blog) that at least can be edited if I really stuff up.

I just thought i'd add that Utube is evil... or a great test for will power.People are just so very creative and amusing that it is hard to keep away.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

I have a short assignment to choose a glass artist who generally uses casting as thier form of expression. I thought as we were being given this "oh how easy..i'll do Tessa Clegg". I saw a piece of hers and instantly loved it...with some light research I found I only like SOME of her stuff. Not that likeing is a prerequisite but I feel as though IF i'm doing research I may as well like it..after all I'm doing this because I want to...i'm not getting paid to do this!

So after leafing through some current journals for interesting artists in the 'filed' (such a freudian slip there...does it count if typed? hmmm) FIELD of glass casting I have plumped for(an interesting saying one I will have to look up later) either Heike Brachlow or Rob Snyder.

A hard choice as to whom. What will tip me I think will be my idea of what the school teaching wishes, which of course has an artistic bias.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The demonstration for this weeks class was an ashtray. A heavy roccoco type twirly thing.Andrew's had bubbles but the 'real thing' would have been highly coloured not clear glass with the extra addition of gold leaf as well. 'Gaudy' I think was the term Andrew used.

However the demonstration was used to show a more organic way of pushing the glass around.

it's out of the kiln now so i'll get a snap.

We (the student's) continued on with our tumblers and colour.

hhmm, I think I know why they used colour..something to look at apart from cigarette butts.

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